by Rod Cameron

New Labour’s decision to put the EHRC dog onto the BNP has cost New Labour dearly. Not only has New Labour disowned its Working Class roots, but also it has handed over on a silver plate the most precious part of its history, its formative years, to the BNP. History of a century and more ago has repeated. The danger inherent to becoming part of the Establishment is to forget your forebears and their struggles, and then you surrender your political soul. I offer you this analogy.

THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY

The decision by Nick Griffin to change the constitution of the BNP to allow blacks and Asians to join, following pressure from the EHRC, should be received by the BNP with a certain sanguinity. Knowledge of the rise of the British Labour Movement will result in a wry acceptance that this is “par for the course”. Not for the first time social realities are being ignored and Establishmentarian forces are arrayed against the political newcomer.

The Social Reality

Trade unionism and opposition to immigration were preservationist/survivalist reactions to social realities. The Labour Movement was motivated by the need for working-class preservation. The BNP arises from the desire for ethnic self-preservation.

Establishmentarian Reactions

It was not hard to understand why labour should wish to become organised and legitimate, and it is not hard to understand why there is opposition to non-European immigration, but the liberal Establishment is ideologically committed and conservative.

In the early days of the trade union movement the Establishment used the press and the courts to fend off the threat, and similarly they are being used against the BNP. The right to picket was successfully challenged in a decision in the case of Lyons versus Wilkins in 1896. A second target for judicial action was union funds. Unions were successfully sued for damages on the grounds of having inflicted a financial injury on an innocent party during a dispute. The Taff Vale Railway Company in 1901 bought a successful action against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for damages caused by a strike in Wales. The Society lost ?23,000 in damages and ?19,000 in legal costs, horrendous sums in those days. These two cases seriously threatened the viability of unionism and a direct consequence was a transformation of working class attitude that led to the independent Labour Party. Previously there was inertia from the masses that could be expected to get behind the Labour Party. These legal attacks threatened the gains that had been made and strengthened Working Class resolve to build the political side of the Movement to legitimise unionism.

The modern version of the issue

Legal action against the BNP by the EHRC is similarly a legal ploy and the party’s avoidance of continuing legal action is a pragmatic response to what could be a crippling blow. What the Commission hoped to achieve aside from bankrupting a belligerent BNP, eludes me. To litigate the imposition of a dubious value [equality] upon an organisation that expressly rejects equality is odious. For British democracy an inferior value has prevailed over the superior virtue of democratic preference. The Taff Vale Railway might have won in court but it caused working class solidarity. The EHRC also is likely to realise something counter-productive to their purpose. As in war, there can be unforeseen consequences and the forfeiture of New Labours survivalist, formative history to its arch-enemy is one such consequence.

The preservation of the British working class and the preservation of the British race are struggles against an intransigent Establishment. The survivalist nature of both struggles means that the BNP has inherited Labour history, so the BNP comes away from this skirmish with a moral/historical victory.

Getting philosophical about it

The Establishment of a hundred years ago, and the world in general, had a singular idea of truth. It was the struggles of non-conformist religions and labour movements to establish their right to independently exist that have contributed to our pluralistic sense of truth. These protesting groups had no philosophic argument about truth being plural, but the out-come of their struggle has been the acceptance of someone’s “point of view” as equally relevant. So all change does not result from great minds. There is also a consequence of ordinary people feeling their way through life.

Let me try to explain the drama with the EHRC in the development of ideas. The EHRC’s set-to with the BNP reflects the Establishment’s belief in equality. There is no widespread belief in equality and the ridiculous thing about our little drama is that the Establishment has [by its action and institution] deemed equality to be an absolute value. The only grounds for the absoluteness of equality is that it is necessary to the government given the cock-up the government has made with immigration.

A pseudo-absolute is a gesture to help keep the lid on social unrest. Another gesture is remembrance of the holocaust on 27th January whereupon tolerance, diversity and raising moral consciousness get paraded as paramount, i.e. absolute. The British have no intrinsic reason to mark this day, so it will fall by the way and be added to the list of values that no-one cares for. The trashing or warping of values in the early 21st century reflects the failure of government. People already think values are relative but they try to imagine some kind of common interest clings to these concepts; it is natural to want a lodestar and the Establishment wish it to be anti-racism.

Anti-racism is the last of the great ethical absolutes and it is this value that is causing either the trashing or warping of the values mentioned. And given time it will be sorted out and chances are anti-racism will go the way of all previous moral absolutes. To where our ideas about values are evolving cannot be predicted, but we do have an ultimate value in democracy and if that is trashed then predictions can be made. The government’s use of the EHRC against the BNP was not a victory for democracy, indeed it slightly warps democracy in Britain, but it is a landmark in some progression, as is New Labour’s disowning its own survivalist history.